Over 42 years in a mission called New Tribes, working with other men and women to go to the unreached people groups around the world; many have wondered, and a few have asked. “Jack what is it that has motivated you to keep so excited about missions for so many years?”
Others and my self at times are more interested in what moved me to step out with a wife and three young sons and head to New Tribes Mission to be trained to do mission work somewhere in other parts of the world. I have contemplated the question and to be honest, I sometimes walk away scratching my head. Why one man and not another?
Louis Lamour uses one of his characters, Barnabas Sackett to ask a similar quest in his book titled “To the far Blue Mountains.” Barnabas looks at it this way, “Thus far we have all come together, and now some strange device, some inner urge, some strange thread grown into our being was selecting us to move westward, Selecting? Or was it we ourselves who chose? Never would I cease to wonder at why one man and not another.”
With me it was a strange device, a book titled, “God planted five seeds” written by Mrs Jean Johnson, the inner urge had to be the Holy Spirit and the thread grown into my being comes from reading the Word of God. Proclaiming God to the nations is a thread that runs from Genesis to Revelations. Hearing Jesus speak the words, “Follow Me” demanded me to make a choice. Still, the question remains, why one man and not another?